You’ve heard of Christmas cheer, Christmas cake, even Christmas deer — Rudolf, the red-nosed reindeer. But what about the Christmas frog? Yes, there’s one. In fact, it’s found only in India. 

Ashwika Kapur, the Martinian-Xaverian who put Calcutta on the world wildlife map in 2014 by winning the Wildscreen Panda Award (also known as the Green Oscar) in the Best Newcomer category, spent the monsoon of 2016 pursuing the Christmas frog or Xmas frog that is endemic to Shillong. And the result is a 20-minute film called Thumbelina.

‘Its own little jacuzzi’

But there’s a catch. The Xmas frog is t-i-n-y. So tiny that the baby Xmas frog can fit inside a single drop of rain. “When I saw my first one, the froglet was sitting inside a drop of rain, like in its own little jacuzzi,” laughed the 28-year-old who has studied natural history filmmaking in New Zealand. 

Not just tiny, the Xmas frog is nocturnal, which makes filming it even more difficult. “Frogs are extremely hard to film. They do very little, they’re not the most charismatic of creatures... but when I went through the material sent by the Wildlife Institute of India, in the acknowledgements was my grandfather’s name (A.P. Kapur), who used to be the director of the Zoological Survey of India in the 1970s. It was under him that the initial research on the frog had started. I was like, okay, now there’s no turning back,” said Ashwika, whose first documentary was on the Kakapo, an endangered flightless bird of New Zealand.   

When she landed in Shillong, Ashwika realised that the Xmas frogs’ calls fill Shillong in monsoon. “But nobody really knows where the calls are coming from. There’s no picture of the Xmas frog on Google Images. Only if you dig a little deeper will you get the scientific name (Raorchestes shillongensis) and all that.” 

Another reason Ashwika took up this challenge was because, “the lesser-known conservation projects are hardly ever covered on television and being an avid animal lover irrespective of size or popularity of the animal, I thought it’s about time,” felt Ashwika, who has just wrapped up a two-year cross-country project for Animal Planet featuring all the mega-fauna of India.

Thumbelina’s search for her frog prince

Coming back to the little creatures, these frogs are so called because they were initially discovered on Christmas Day in the 1970s.

But research on the Xmas frog is still in the nascent stage and a large part of the information emerged even as Ashwika was filming. Like how long the frog eggs take to hatch (about four weeks), and the fact that they completely skip the tadpole stage and go straight to froglet stage.

“We decided we would follow one Xmas frog in the monsoon — which is the mating season — in her quest to find a mate. It’s a little frog-in-a-big-city story. And because of her size, we’ve called her Thumbelina. So this is Thumbelina’s journey to find her frog prince,” explained Ashwika.

The main aim of this film is to raise awareness about this tiny little amphibian, which has been categorised as “critically endangered” because its habitat is an area less than 100sqkm in Greater Shillong, and the threats to its existence are many. 

“Why this frog is also very important is because it’s a very ancient species. Frogs have been around for 250 million years. To put things in perspective, we humans have been around for only about 4 or 5 millions years,” Ashwika pointed out. “Frogs have been hopping around at the feet of the dinosaurs — on whom we make huge Hollywood movies like Jurassic Park — but you have to remember that the dinosaurs didn’t survive but the frogs did.”

Thumbelina premiered at the second edition of the three-day Kolkata International Wildlife & Environment Film Festival at Gorky Sadan on December 3. 

And here’s some more Christmas cheer — the film will be available for all on YouTube from December 25. To watch the film, visit the “Thumbelina — The story of an Xmas frog” page on Facebook and follow the link. 

Did you know...

• The Xmas froglet is so tiny that it can fit inside a single drop of rain (in picture)!
• The Xmas frog has been categorised as ‘critically endangered’.  
• Frogs are ancient creatures that have been around for 250 million years.  
• Frogs are bio indicators of the health of an ecology. If you have frogs hopping around in your backyard, that means you are doing something right.
• Ashwika’s film, Thumbelina, will be available on YouTube from December 25.